Comments 1

Lieke Asma’s otherwise excellent paper had a very unfortunate title – “There Is No Free Won’t”; especially unfortunate because headlined on the cover of this issue of the JCS. Her paper actually and correctly points out that, given an appropriate concept of ‘freedom’, Libet-type experiments allegedly showing that volitional choices are pre-determined by brain activity in fact do nothing of the sort. In other words, the title is in almost direct opposition to the paper’s conclusion.

Presumably Asma viewed her title as no more than a shorthand reference to pro-deterministic arguments discussed and dismissed in the paper, but it is catchy and its repetition on the front cover is especially likely to mislead anyone fond of sound bytes – which probably includes nearly all of us.

It’s especially sad in that the relevant issues were exhaustively discussed (albeit usually more in connection with ‘free will’ than ‘free won’t) a decade or two ago, when all but a few diehards reached much the same conclusions as the ones actually expressed in Asma’s paper. We can only hope that the unfortunate title won’t give comfort to any remaining neo-Calvinists – or mislead any newcomers.